


Trickster

by icarus_chained



Series: Weregild 'verse [7]
Category: Norse Mythology - Fandom, Supernatural
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Episode Related, Family, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-27
Updated: 2012-04-27
Packaged: 2017-11-04 10:21:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/392794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Getting up into SPN main timeframe, now. A pair of ficlets dealing with the Trickster eps: 2x15 (Tall Tales) and 3x11 (Mystery Spot) from a Gabriel/Loki perspective. Forebodings towards the Apocalypse, and both their relationships with their respective families, involved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Justice (Tall Tales)

There is a peculiar sense of justice to what the Trickster does, now that Gabriel is part of it. Alone, for himself, Loki plies tricks and plays games for survival, or for amusement. A game, or life and death, the most benign or the most dire, but never ... never _purposeful_. Never with these strange shadings of judgement that Gabriel brings.

This town, the justice is for Loki. Almost an offering, from his archangel to him. A play enacted on tiny players, to echo older crimes. Gabriel chooses his targets with care, and Loki cannot help but appreciate it.

The boy, the fraternity pledgemaster (blood-brother) for Loki himself, for years of being safe only as long as he obeyed, as long as he was useful, as long as he was true in his brother's sight. The boy taken by things he cannot understand, things that have no place in his world (things nine days on the World Tree would do nothing to help). It is Loki's hand that keeps this one alive. This small death will not appease the larger life, but the gesture is appreciated. For Loki.

The professor, the womaniser and seducer, for their daughter. For Hel. Not that she would ever allow herself to be used that way. But for the man who thought women were there to _be_ used, to be put in their place and made useful. For the man who flinched as the face turned grey and corpselike, and looked in disgust at what was still beautiful, to their eyes. They turn to face the remains as it lands, and Loki is hard-pressed not to sneer. For Hel.

The 'scientist', the torturer and murderer of those who wore beastly forms, for their sons. For Fenrir and Jormungandr and Sleipnir, and the crimes committed against them that were not crimes, so long as they did not wear a human shape. Teeth and claws rend him to pieces, and though Gabriel doesn't enjoy it, there is still a vicious satisfaction in his archangel, that Loki loves, always loves. For their sons.

Yes, there is justice in this town. In these tricks, these games that Gabriel plays, and Loki finds it good. Finds it ... sweet. A sweetness not tainted by the hunters that come, by the games played between self-righteous brothers, by the laughing battle at the end of it and the taste of chocolate in their mouth as they stand victorious by Loki's oldest means. By trickery and fakery and death. The sweetness is not tainted.

But Loki does not notice, not until later, much later, a year, that for Gabriel there is a taint. That for Gabriel, a bitterness sneaks into the sweetness of their justice. Loki does not notice, until the fear and the rage take hold in truth.

In some ways, he is glad. At least they had the sweetness first.


	2. Point of Mercy and of Fear (Mystery Spot)

For a second, as the boy begged for his brother, as the human begged them --no, the Trickster ... no, _Gabriel_ , because this was no action of their composite identity, this was no action of his, this was all _Gabriel_ \-- as the boy begged for the chance to have his brother back, as Loki coiled quivering underneath Gabriel and felt him stare into Winchester's desperate, bleak expression ... he remembered, suddenly, why he feared the archangel, once upon a time. He remembered what it was like to be helpless before this being, to be chained and at his mercy, to _know_ , in some desperate place inside him, that this creature would delight in destroying him. He remembered that.

This thing ... this beginning of an end, this Apocalypse come a-whispering, this trap closing around Gabriel's future from all sides ... It brought back the cruel, desperate thing that came to him in his bonds beneath the earth. It brought back the thing that bought him, body and soul, that invaded him and owned him and stole him for itself. It brought back the Gabriel he saw before the softening, before his children, before the warmth that has grown between them.

This boy. His brother. The whispers of the future in their blood, the faces of archangels behind their eyes that only Gabriel could see, the devil's face that pleaded for his brother's life, the general's eyes as he died over and over, the futures writ upon human flesh ... they shook his archangel to his core. Shook him, tore him, woke something savage and desperate inside him. Made Gabriel again that desperate, furious, cruel thing.

And Loki ... all Loki could do was ride it out. Wrap close, tamp down the raw edge of his archangel's pain, his fury, and ride it out until it was finished. Until the ravaged edge of grief spun lose and faded, and Gabriel was his once more. While his archangel stared into the depths of determination and despair behind a human's eyes, while a life hung between the present and future and Gabriel's ability to set them apart ... Loki hung on. Held tight. Between the fear of his past and Gabriel's future, and the trust ... the trust in their present. The trust in what they had become. Loki held on. Loki held tight.

And Gabriel ... chose. And the savage creature that held a life in his hands, as he had held Loki's before, the archangel, _Gabriel_ ... looked at a creature bound before his mercy ... and chose.

And in that moment, there was more, so much more ... for Loki to remember.


End file.
